5of8Habit is a personalized nutrition startup from Neil Grimmer, the former CEO of baby food company Plum Organics. The Oakland startup, which launched in January, promises users a suite of genomic information, tips and eating plans based on results from a test kit.Photo: Habit

6of8Habit is a personalized nutrition startup from Neil Grimmer, the former CEO of baby food company Plum Organics. The Oakland startup, which launched in January, promises users a suite of genomic information, tips and eating plans based on results from a test kit.Photo: Habit

7of8Screen grabs from the Oakland startup Habit show the breadth of information the company gives users based on their DNA, a blood test and online questionnaire.Photo: Habit

8of8Habit is a personalized nutrition startup from Neil Grimmer, the former CEO of baby food company Plum Organics. The Oakland startup, which launched in January, promises users a suite of genomic information, tips and eating plans based on results from a test kit.Photo: Habit

Given the choice between going on yet another diet or “a personalized journey” that helps explore “the story of you” and “the future of feeling great,” which would you choose?

Neil Grimmer, the former CEO of baby food company Plum Organics, is betting on the latter with his new venture, Habit. So is its sole investor who bought into the vision big time — at $32 million.

The Oakland startup capitalizes on the surge of interest in home DNA tests, like 23andMe and the just-launched Helix, as the age of the quantified self promises to uncover “the science of you” through data. It also taps into the growing frustration with often-conflicting dieting advice. Even weight-loss heavyweight Weight Watches has rebranded itself as a “lifestyle program,” as noted in a recent New York Times Magazine story headlined “Losing it in the anti-dieting age.”

Habit, which launched in January in the Bay Area and expanded nationally last month, is “the world’s first personalized nutrition company — as we say, from test to table,” Grimmer said. “We do a Habit test kit, we have a digital dashboard, we do coaching to help people with their goals, and then to kind of hit that easy button, we do fresh, prepared meals customized to the person, delivered to their door.”

The service delivers a comprehensive suite of results based on the test kit, which includes a DNA cheek swab, and a three-step blood test that reveals the tester’s blood sugar reactions to chugging a high-fat, high-carb beverage. (Users also take an online quiz about exercise habits, goals and other personal information.) All it will cost you is $299, a few hours and some drops of blood. (Read about the writer’s experience trying Habit at www.sfchronicle.com/style.)

“Where we think the real unlock is, around the Habit science, is around your phenotype, which is your bloodwork, your body measurements, things that are going on in your body real time, combined with how you react to this Challenge beverage,” Grimmer said.

Christopher Gardner, a Stanford nutrition professor whose work centers on studying dietary components or food patterns in adult populations, and who has seen several of Habit’s presentations, applauds the effort but offers a note of skepticism: “Proving that you can do this personalized medicine is way harder than having a great idea.”

Gardner worked on a nutrition study with Jae Berman, an S.F. native with a master’s degree in nutrition and physiology from Columbia University in New York, who joined Habit in May 2016. She is the head coach, helping users interpret their results and set goals.

“If you were to go to a standard Western doctor, you’d get your blood panel, and if one thing is high, they’d highlight that one thing and maybe give you a prescription and move on,” she said. By utilizing systems biology, however, “we’re looking at everything at the same time and making recommendations on the whole story.”

Habit calls out more than 50 to 60 biomarkers, ranging from lactose intolerance and caffeine sensitivity to cholesterol levels and other blood- and DNA-derived indicators covering other genes that may affect health or weight loss. “When you look at your genetic information, you’re going to see a bunch of things that are positive — we use the word impactful,” Berman said. Habit presents the biomarkers simply as information that might spur action or changes, rather than a diagnosis.

Users receive a free session with a coach such as Berman after test results come back, usually within a few weeks.

“We have this overview section: food philosophy nugget to focus on; your food groups; your hero foods — ideal for you based on micro or macro nutrients,” she said. For example, a protein seeker’s hero food might be salmon, to help increase omega-3 consumption.

To that end, Habit has a commissary kitchen in Oakland whipping up a la carte breakfast, lunch or dinners, for between $7.99 and $13.50. They’re delivered twice weekly, within the Bay Area only, early in the morning.

“The food that we’re making is one part art, one part science,” Grimmer said. “The culinary is so important. We have a mantra that everything we make needs to be seductive — the food, the design. It all needs to inspire the senses.”

Grimmer’s vision for the company is a cross-pollination of his personal life and professional background. He had sold Plum Organics to Campbell Soup in 2013 but continued on as CEO for the next 2½ years. A former Iron Man triathlete, he had also put on 50 pounds during the past decade. His wife urged him to take action.

“As a guy, I wasn’t that inspired to go to the doctor, but as an entrepreneur and a problem solver, I thought, ‘Oh, this is an interesting problem to solve. And it’s probably not unique to me.’ So I started tinkering with myself and meeting with amazing doctors.”

After incorporating some of their insights and practices, Grimmer was able to lose 25 pounds in six months. “And that led me to kind of having this aha moment of, if I can take all this stuff and bring it into something that can be accessible to many people around the country, it can unlock their potential as well.”

Habit’s advisory board and partners includes some of these scientists whom Grimmer met as he explored personalized nutrition, as well as Dr. Josh Anthony, Habit’s founding chief science officer and vice president of global nutrition and health at Campbell Soup Co.

That’s no coincidence. Grimmer had a strong relationship with the company even after he sold Plum Organics. He said that Campbell CEO Denise Morrison, who had also been curious enough about Habit in its formative stages to try it, “saw it as a strategic imperative for (Campbell) to expand into new space, fast-growing spaces.” Campbell is the “lead and sole investor” in Habit.

Meanwhile, Stanford nutrition professor Gardner said the fact that nutrition scientists haven’t found a one-size-fits-all solution fuels a perception that medicine should be more personal.

“We really owe it to Americans and the world to figure this out, but we’re really early in tackling this. People are hungry for these other ideas,” he said.

The main results of his own work, a landmark 2012 National Institutes of Health study comparing low-fat and low-carb diets assigned based on genotype and metabolism, are currently under review. Gardner said the variance in weight loss for the 300 participants spanned 80 pounds over a continuum. “There was not a cluster that lost or gained the same amount.” A study may answer a few questions, but generate 10 more.

But he understands that people want answers sooner, and he recognizes the private sector is acting on its own ideas because “if they wait for science to test it, everyone will be dead.”

Habit declines to state how many users it has, although Grimmer said over 500 had been part of the testing experience as of March, and a company spokeswoman said the test-kit waiting list has “thousands.”

Habit The initial test kit is $299, and includes a free coaching session. The company also offers meals ($7.99-$14.50 per meal), and nutrition and food behavior coaching by subscription. A 10-week session consisting of three 1-on-1 phone/video meetings and digital text-based support costs $150. https://habit.com/

Just my type

I tried the $299 Habit test kit (paid for by The Chronicle) for the purposes of this story. It arrived, Apple-like, in a sleek box designed like a book. “Every body tells a story — what’s yours?” it inquired.

As a 46-year-old woman who mirrors the women’s average height and weight (not a good thing, as this national number is on the rise), I was eager to find out what kind of magic formula Habit might have for me.

Three months later, after submitting various bodily fluids and barely holding down the Challenge beverage shake, I found out.

I was most interested in which of the seven “types” Habit has identified that I fell into nutritionally. When I clicked open my results email and signed on, the user-friendly Habit site greeted me (by name!) with easy-to-read charts and graphics spelling out ratios, “hero foods” and lots of ways to delve deeper into the science and to look at which biomarkers determine your “type.”

Despite two “impactful” genes associated with high blood pressure, for example, “whatever you’re doing in your current lifestyle is not making you have elevated blood pressure,” head coach Jae Berman told me during my session with her (included in the price of the kit).

I was classified as a “protein seeker” with low fat and low carb “flexibility” — meaning that my body is more likely to store fat and more likely to convert carbs into fat. At last, confirmation of a deeply held suspicion. The prescription? A diet of 25 percent healthy fats, 35 percent lean and very lean protein, and 40 percent carbs, including fewer foods that are high in saturated fat and more foods that are high in unsaturated fat, and just two fruit servings and half-cup “starch” servings per day — about what I eat now. When I expressed reservations about eating 9 to 11 vegetable servings a day (1 cup raw or ½ cup cooked constitutes a serving), Berman reassured me that “everyone lives in ranges,” rather than absolutes.

“All of our Habit plans are vegetable friendly because we all want to shoot for the stars,” Berman said. “We would really love you to eat 11 servings of vegetables. Because the plan is lower in carbohydrates and fat, vegetables really become your staple.”

Luckily for me, I live in the vegetable nirvana that is the Bay Area, yet I still probably eat only half of the recommended servings. Still, it’s a challenge I’m eager to embrace. I did not try the Habit meals but have been more mindful of including legume and protein sources throughout the day, and strategic healthy fats (avocado toast for breakfast!).

The recommenations have not translated into weight loss yet, but as someone who was already eating a Mediterranean-like diet, I wasn’t expecting miracles. But for $299, Habit delivers an incredible amount of information.

Laura Compton is the Sunday Datebook Editor, overseeing the section’s arts and entertainment coverage. She began her career at The Chronicle in 1998 as a copy editor in the daily Datebook, and since then has worked as an assigning editor, copy editor and writer for the Living, Chronicle magazine and Food sections, and for the past 10 years as Style Editor. Laura introduced coverage of the Bay Area’s independent fashion design and retail scene with features like Window Shopping, #SFStyle and the former SFUnzipped blog on SFGate. A Washington state native, she attended Mills College in Oakland and loves experiencing and finding ways to cover Northern California’s unique arts, culture and lifestyle.